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Philosophy/Tough Questions
Who decides what God is like?
Increasingly in our culture there is a tendency for individuals to determine on their own the kind of God they will believe in. It seems that there are as many kinds of gods to believe in as there are people to think them up. There's Allah of Islam, Yahweh of Judaism, the Great Spirit of native America, Vishnu of Hinduism, Jesus of Christianity, etc. And within each of these larger faiths there is a wide variety of interpretation about their deities. Who decides what God is like?Who decides what God is like?
Suppose I have met you only once or have merely heard your name and based on that I have made certain assumptions. Suppose I think of you as tall well-educated female citizen of Belgium. That would be fine if all those things are true. But if you were a male high school drop-out from Brooklyn, then my assumptions are wrong and any discussion about you or actions based on those inaccuracies would be misleading.
It becomes even more troubling when we talk about specific character qualities. Suppose, based on what very little I know about you, I tell a passer-by that you are a gossip and a cheat. I may or may not be right about you, but shouldn't I know you better before I begin making sweeping judgments about you? What if I really want to believe those things about you? Does that make them true? Do I get to decide what you are like?
Obviously, the answer is no. I don't determine your identity or your character. You do. And unless I want to swim against the current of reality, I will discover who you are before I begin drawing conclusions about you. Even if I sincerely and deeply believe the wrong things about you, I'm still wrong. You determine who you are and what you're like.
In the same way, God decides what he is like. We don't each get to design him to our liking. And the best part is, we don't have to. We don't have to guess or hope he's a certain kind of God. We can know for sure what he is like. We just have to determine what he has said about himself. We need to discover this: How has God MOST COMPLETELY revealed himself?